Star on the Run

[telfrow]

<i>Astronomers have discovered a massive star moving extremely quickly through the outer halo of the Milky Way, and into intergalactic space. The star, named HE 0437-5439, was discovered as part of the Hamburg/ESO sky survey, and was clocked traveling at 723 km/s, or 2.6 million kilometres per hour (1.6 million miles an hour). It's possible that the star was accelerated when it came too close to a supermassive black hole in the centre of the Large Magellanic Cloud.</i><br /><br />Full story at: http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/star_on_the_run.html?9112005 <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <strong><font color="#3366ff">Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will to strive, to seek, to find and not to yeild.</font> - <font color="#3366ff"><em>Tennyson</em></font></strong> </div>

 

[newtonian]

crazyeddie - I agree this is amazing! I wonder how many intergalactic stars there are?<br /><br />However, note that the star may be older than it appears. <br /><br />Scientific American recently published various scenarios for different star mergers.<br /><br />The link for this thread also considers this star may be much older than it appears due to a star merger.<br /><br />Note that star mergers do not always decrease stellar life spans.<br /><br />More likely, though, is that the star was already old before the merger, as it is burning very hot now and is very massive compared with our sun.<br /><br />Such a star merger would allow for this star to have come from the Milky Way core supermassive black hole.<br /><br />Star collisions are far more common in the Milky Way core.<br /><br />Obviously, we need information on trajectory, not just speed.<br /><br />I.e. where does its trajectory say it came from????